Manaiakalani Maths practise Intensive - Day 1

Today was the first day of the Manaiakalani Maths practise Intensive (MPI), a 9 day maths development course aimed at equipping teachers with the necessary skills and knowledge to teach maths effectively. 

For part of the day we reflected on the Pillars of Mathematics Practise. We asked ourselves what elements are we doing well in and what elements need attention. I found this a productive and worthwhile exercise. In the business of teaching you often don't have the time to do this, or if you do it gets taken up with something more pressing.

From this reflection I came away wanting to focus on developing extended mathematics discussion in my practise. Years back I did a lot of this, particularly when our school was adopting the Developing Mathematical Inquiry Communities (DMIC) pedagogy. However, in recent years I haven't been using discussion based leanring in maths. I look forward to teaching my students about the Ground Rules for Talk and developing their ability to robustly discuss maths problems and to share and justify their thinking.  

I was also interested in how I could integrate other curriculum areas into maths. Because I see another group of students for literacy I have often shied away from integration in maths however, I see the benefits am looking forward to embracing the integration challenge. Stay tuned for more updates.